


our once barren world now brims with life

by smoakoverwatch



Series: Olicity + William [3]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Bonding, F/M, Family, Gen, i needed to write some fluff, idk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 18:46:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12018810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smoakoverwatch/pseuds/smoakoverwatch
Summary: Felicity is worried Willaim won't like her. Oliver wholeheartedly disagrees.





	our once barren world now brims with life

**Author's Note:**

> It occurred to me that most of my fics involving Will and Felicity have established their good relationship, and I’ve done nothing to explore how they get there. So for that, there is this. Enjoy.
> 
> (PS, I started writing this ages ago and hit a wall until I met Stephen at a con (!!) and he gave the ‘Felicity is good at math’ tease, but as it turns out I’ve done that in fic before. Eh.)

Oliver almost misses it at first.

It’s been only weeks since the team was rescued off the remains of Lian Yu and they’ve all returned home.

Felicity pads down the stairs of the loft tiredly one morning as Oliver makes breakfast. She slides over silently and curls a hand around his forearm, pressing her cheek into where his bicep meets the end of his thin t-shirt. He feels the warmth radiating from her as she melts into his side.

“Morning,” he says quietly with a smile. She hums in response. “Breakfast?”

“Definitely,” she mumbles tiredly, pressing a kiss into his skin.

He lets her stay wrapped like that, using his other hand to flip the pancakes as she slowly lets the drowsiness fade away.

“Office today?” he asks conversationally.

She nods tiredly against his skin. “Might be working a little late tonight. Missing team stuff. Don’t wanna.”

“We’ll be fine, honey.”

“Doubt that,” she replies lightly, “but I’ll try to be there.”

Oliver chuckles, his chest shaking under her hand that’s snaked up there.

When he hears another set of footsteps, Oliver cranes his neck towards the staircase.

“Hey William,” he greets his son, and immediately the warmth on his arm disappears as Felicity takes a step back and lands against the kitchen island.

Oliver watches out of the corner of his eye as Felicity awkwardly pulls her hair back and pretends to be interested in the ingredients he laid out on the counter.

His eyebrows furrow at how strange she’s behaving, but he files it away for later.

The thought flies from his mind quickly, as he slides the pancakes into a plate and hands them out, enjoying instead the picture his little family over breakfast makes.

* * *

It gives him pause a few days later in the lair, when he asks Felicity if she’d like to join him and William for a baseball game.

She freezes over her computers, which are powering down for the night.

“Just you two?” she asks, keeping her eyes trained on the now-black screens.

“Yeah,” he furrows his eyebrows, “I thought it could be fun, you know, just the three of us. Saturday afternoon.” He waves the three tickets in his hand for emphasis.

Felicity grimaces. “I don’t know, Oliver.” She still doesn’t meet her eyes as she throws a few things into her purse.

“Oh come on,” Oliver almost laughs, “why not?”

“It’s just…” she throws a hand in the air. “Baseball? Come on, you now that’s not really my thing.”

“You liked going to games when we lived in Ivy Town,” he says almost defensively.

She ignores his comment, and gives a smile that seems forced at best.

“Why don’t you ask John if he wants to go, make it like a guys’ day out? Seriously, Oliver, I’d just be a big bore.”

She shoves her coat on with more force than necessary and reaches her hand out. “Ready to go home?” she says, her eyes telling Oliver that he should probably drop the subject.

* * *

The next time Oliver notices is a few weeks after. It’s Sunday morning, after a particularly grueling week for Oliver and Felicity in both their day and night jobs. They both decide that they deserve an extra hour in bed.

Well, he tries to get up for a run a first. But then Felicity starts running her hand up and down his spine, flashes her eyes at him and asks him, “Stay?” in that  _ dangerous  _ little breathy whisper of hers.

He melts. Almost embarrassingly fast.

She gives a wicked smile when he sinks into the bed again, propping herself up on one elbow. Her fingertips trail down his torso as she leans down to kiss him, her blonde hair spilling over the pillow.

When she throws a leg over him and slides on top of his waist, he finally responds, curling an arm around her and bringing her in closer.

They stay like that for a few minutes, caught up in lazy kisses and wandering hands, before a knock on the door breaks them apart.

“Oliver?” William calls from the other side.

Next thing Oliver knows, Felicity is no longer pressed against him, but rolling to the other side of the bed with a gasp, until the sheets tangle up and she’s flying off, landing on the floor with a soft  _ thud _ .

Oliver gets up immediately, leaning over to where she fell and raising an eyebrow. She waves a hand away silently.

He opens his mouth to respond, but a second knock on the door stops him. Felicity’s eyes widen at the sound and Oliver thinks he has an idea as to what is going on.

He rises from the bed, throwing on a pair of sweatpants and trying to ignore the growing tent in his pants as he walks.

He opens the door halfway. “Yeah buddy?” he tries to clear his throat.

William winces sheepishly. “Sorry, you’re usually awake by now. I was just downstairs and I got hungry but we’re out of milk.”

Oliver almost laughs.

“Okay, I’ll go run and get some.”

“Thanks,” William awkwardly bounces on his feet and walks downstairs.

When he closes the door, Oliver returns to Felicity, who still waits on the floor.

“So,” he says casually, “wanna tell me what this is about?”

“What  _ what  _ is about?” Felicity responds innocently.

He tilts his head to the side.

“Why did you jump off the bed like that?”

“I was startled,” she says simply.

“Startled,” he repeats flatly.

She only nods.

“It had nothing to do with William?” Oliver presses on.

“Well, he is the one who did the startling.”

“Felicity.”

“Oliver,” she repeats in the same tone. “I don’t know what you’re trying to get at.”

“I don’t know,” he stretches a hand out to help her up. “It’s just like the other day, when William walks in you got all tense. Or how you didn’t want to go to the game with us. Is something wrong?”

“Oliver, you’re reading into things,” she gathers her hair into a ponytail. “I got scared that a kid would walk in on the two of us doing things that would scar him for life. It happens.”

Oliver doesn’t think so. And he tells her that.

“I don’t think so,” he walks around her before she can move to the bathroom. “I think it’s something else, and I wish you would tell me what it is.”

“Oliver,” she sighs exasperatedly, “it’s nothing.”

“ _ Felicity, _ ” he says, matching her tone.

Her eyes hit the ceiling as she scoffs, but when they come down, they look oddly glassy.

“I’m scared.”

Oliver feels his blood go cold.

“What?”

She crosses her arms. “I know it may sound dumb, and it feels dumb, but I’m scared… that… that William doesn’t like me.”

“Felicity,” he says, at a loss for words. She seems so genuinely upset but it baffles him that  _ anyone _ , let alone William, could possibly hate her. “That’s impossible. He likes you just fine.”

She raises her eyebrows.   

“Really,” she says flatly.

Oliver’s eyebrows knit together. “Has he said something?”

“No, of course not,” her arms tighten around her stomach defensively. “but I mean… why would he, right?”

“Felicity?”

She throws her hands in the air helplessly. “I just feel like… every time he looks at me, he probably sees me as the one who survived what his mother didn’t.”

“Felicity –” Oliver tries, but it’s too late. The dam has been broken and the words start tumbling out of her mouth before she even realizes.

“And I know, it’s not my fault, and we’re both working on the whole survivor’s guilt thing, but he’s just a kid, and I’d understand if he felt that way. And he’s just this quiet kid in general but I feel like he’s okay with you, but when I’m around I probably make him uncomfortable.”

She starts pacing around the room.

“And I’ve never been around kids, okay?” her voice rises and gets dangerously shaky, and if he couldn’t hear the TV on downstairs, Oliver would be worried about her voice carrying through the apartment. “I mean sure, I babysat in high school and I did pretty well but it’s different when he’s around and I really  _ want  _ to impress him but I never know what to say.”

Oliver tries to reach an arm out but Felicity is already walking to the other side of the room.

“And I know we aren’t married yet and we haven’t talked about it – which is fine!” her eyes widen. “But I still feel like he thinks I’m some Disney movie evil stepmom and you love him so much I just want to be the same and I –”

She finally breaks off, covering her mouth to contain the small sob that springs up her throat.

Oliver takes that as his in, immediately stepping forward to wrap an arm around her shoulders. “Whoa, hey, Felicity, listen to me,” he says gently, running a hand over her knotted hair. “I understand why you’re worried, but believe me when I say William doesn’t hate you.”

She gives a little sniffle in response.

“Maybe you two just need to spend some time together. You know, bond, get to know each other. You won’t feel so weird around him.”

“What do you think I should do?” she croaks out.

“Just let things happen. Don’t think so hard about it,” he says, his hand travelling down her cheek, his thumb skimming across the wet skin.

Finally, she nods against him. She pushes away and wipes her face, looking up at him with a determination he sees only when they have important missions. Without another word, Felicity pulls her hair back and gets ready for her day.

* * *

 

He can tell when Felicity’s acting differently now, but in a better way. She doesn’t shy away or clam up when William is around, but is looking out for opportunities where she can jump in the conversation with them.

Oliver catches her viciously googling articles about the top video games of the year one night when he knows she should be checking her work email.

“Hon?” he asks, setting the water he had brought her down on the table.

She ignores him. “Do you think William would like an Xbox or a PlayStation more?”

“What?” Oliver feels oddly thrown.

“None of these articles are making any sense,” she continues, still staring at the screen, “and personally, when I was a kid I would have  _ killed _ for a Nintendo 64 but we couldn’t really afford one, but I can now, and I figured William would like one.”

Gently, Oliver pries the laptop from Felicity’s fingers. Usually, it’s a bad idea and he would never do it, but he wants to stop this train before it leaves the station.

“Okay, look at me,” he finally says when he sets the computer down away from her, “what are you doing?”

She looks up with innocent, if not tired, eyes. “I was researching video game consoles,” she says, “wasn’t it obvious?”

He almost laughs. “I got that. I just meant… why?”

“To buy for William?” she says slowly, as if  _ he’s  _ the one missing the point.

“I got that,” he says almost shortly, but reigns it in. “Felicity, you don’t need to  _ spoil  _ William with things he doesn’t need just to get him to like you.”

Her mouth presses into a thin line, “I don’t  _ need to,  _ but I want to. He should have nice things, and I can give them to him.”

“I just mean that’s not the only way to a kid’s heart. Just spent some time with him, talk to him and you’ll –”

She throws her hands in the air. “I’ve been trying. It’s not exactly easy, Oliver, to find common ground with a ten-year-old.”

He can hear the frustration in her voice, laced together with miles of doubt Oliver knows he won’t be able to erase with a few simple words.

So he doesn’t offer any comfort this time, and instead says, “you’ll get there, just give it time.”

* * *

And, as it turns out, time is all it takes.

Summer turns to early fall, and a night where all three of them are quietly at home ends up being what solves Felicity’s woes.

Felicity just gets off the phone with Thea when she walks in, watching as Oliver and William and son sit at the dinner table with a mess of worksheets sprawled out. Both father and son wear matching expressions of surliness.

When she walks in, Oliver’s head snaps up. “Maybe Felicity can help you!” he says, his hair sticking up in odd ways and his eyes wide in desperation.

She gives him a weird look, but joins them on the table anyway. “Sure, what’s going on? Math homework?”

William nods.

She pulls a seat out and tries to make sense of the mess in front of her. “Alright, what do we have here?”

“Geometry,” William grumbles. Oliver silently agrees with the sentiment expressed in his son’s voice. “It just isn’t making any sense.”

“No problem.” Felicity pulls the first one down and scans the page, circling the answers William already wrote down and drawing symbols on the side of the page that make little sense to Oliver.

“Okay, first let’s look at what you did in your answers before. When you’re looking for the volume –“

Oliver knows where he’s not needed anymore, and silently pushes away from the table to prepare dinner from the kitchen. He can’t help but watch the two of them with a smile on his face.

For the first time, Felicity looks comfortable and sure of herself around William, both of them smiling as the boy works through the problems and understanding dawns on his face.

He tries to give them a little privacy in their  _ moment,  _ but when he hears his own name he’s pulled back in.

“No need to thank me, William, I’m happy to help.” Felicity says with a smile.

“When I asked Oliver for help, he started Googling the answers,” William admits.

Oliver’s own indignant  _ hey!  _  gets drowned out by Felicity and William bursting out into laughter.

Felicity’s eyes shine so bright when she turns to him and says, “really, Oliver?”    

“I didn’t know how to help,” he mutters, but the two of them forget about him quickly.

“Makes sense,” Felicity says, “I should show you some of Oliver’s own math grades one day Will.”

“Really?” William says, “I thought you didn’t know each other in school?”

“We didn’t,” Felicity says with a wry grin, “but I have my ways of finding things out.” She reaches for her tablet as William watches with wide, curious eyes.

Oliver looks onto the scene from the safety of the kitchen, feeling oddly worried that he may have created a team that would work against him.

But when he sees Felicity pulling up old yearbook photos and the roaring laughter from his son, he puts his own dishes aside and joins them.

He  _ did  _ tell her to find something to bond over, after all.  

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!
> 
> twitter - smoakoverwatch  
> tumblr - overwatchandarrow


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